


between us

by Kes



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, no break-up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-23
Updated: 2018-01-23
Packaged: 2019-03-08 13:29:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13459254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kes/pseuds/Kes
Summary: With his life in ruins, his best idea for an escape route off Sakaar in ruins and a disoriented Bruce Banner in tow, Thor is struggling. Luckily, while he had been searching the Nine Realms for knowledge of Ragnarok, back on Earth Jane Foster's research had been advancing.





	between us

**Author's Note:**

> I am ignoring both the throwaway comment about Jane and Thor breaking up and Thor's entire characterisation in Ragnarok. I have many bones to pick.

Time to readjust. Thor has to consciously stop the sparks in his fingers from frying the useless, useless Quinjet’s remaining circuits because that’s attention that they can’t afford. Bruce Banner is shivering. Norns, he’s tired. “Banner,” he says, because someone has to keep them moving and he is so sick of being someone. “Banner, it is all right.”

“Where are we?” In the background, the recording of Natasha glitches out. Banner reaches out for the wall and lets it guide him down until he is sitting down in the remnants of the Hulk’s shorts. There must be clothes in this jet somewhere, it was always standard practice.

Thor begins rummaging. The raw edges of the metal grind against his skin. “We are on Sakaar. It is a planet, it is –”

“We’re on an alien planet?” Banner says, and his breathing picks up and Thor wants one moment, one moment where no-one around him is having a crisis and goes to sit next to him. Jane’s first reaction to an alien planet had been awe, not panic.

“It’s all right. Yes, this is an alien planet.” Then again, this is Sakaar. “It sucks.”

Banner wants explanations, wants to know what happened, wants to know what happened to Thor’s hair, but if the Grandmaster doesn’t have teams out looking for them then he isn’t half the awful despot he seems to be. And they still haven’t found clothes. They manage a perfunctory exchange of news while Thor is ripping destroyed parts of the Quinjet off to get at the storage compartments, and he manages a perfunctory look at the area while Banner changes.

Sure enough, there are teams. They aren’t here yet, but he suspects they will be within – far too little time to actually matter. With Mjolnir, he could simply have gathered Banner in his arms and flown away. Why hadn’t he appreciated that more? Maybe he can fight them, although the exhaustion dragging at his limbs makes that an uncertain prospect, but the two of them probably can’t outrun the backup.

He goes back inside.

“Was this our way off this planet?” Banner asks, gesturing at the damage the Hulk did.

“Yes.” At the barely-suppressed wince, he sighs and adds, “Well, it was my first idea. We have to go.”

“Why?”

There isn’t time. “I told you, the Grandmaster thinks he owns both of us and that I seduced the Hulk into running away. There was a sign up about it. Come on, Banner.” He cautiously sticks his head out of the Quinjet and narrowly avoids being spotted by a person with a massive feather crest and an even bigger gun on top of one of the nearby junk heaps. Perhaps he could lure them down, take the gun, and go from there. A man with a gun is less conspicuous than a man sparking lightning and again, if he could have one moment to think over the implications of that –

An alien honking sound booms out over the semi-industrial thrum of the city, closer and closer, and Thor pulls his head back just in time to avoid getting brained by a hovercar that careens through the junk and screeches to a halt millimetres from the Quinjet. Dust settles. Then the side door pops open and a familiar voice says, “Get in!” and Thor has picked up Banner and his failing heart in one smooth movement and throws the pair of them into the passenger seat, keeping as low as two reasonably-sized-to-large men can.

The hovercar moves again, and after a lot of scuffling and discomfort Banner has been deposited onto the back seat and Thor is drinking in the impossible, beautiful sight of Jane’s profile as she manoueveres them into the heart of the busy city. She’s wearing a varsity hoody under a ragged Sakaarian garment and she has bags under her eyes like she does every time she gets too caught up in her work to sleep. “Jane, what are you doing here?”

“I could ask the same thing about you – whoa – I hate driving here but this thing was free for the fixing so, uh. I did it – oh come on! – then I saw you fight and thought you might be in need of another bailout and tracked down the Quinjet.”

“You are stuck here too.” He rubs his nose in the frustration-gesture he’s picked up from her and hopes it hasn't been too bad for her, that this awful, awful planet hasn't hurt her. If it has, well -

Meanwhile, in the back seat, Banner is finally putting the scattered pieces together. “I’m hallucinating. You’re Jane Foster?”

“Hi! You must be Bruce.” Of course she’s figured it out, but then she’s had however long since the fight to think about it. There is a surreal familiarity to sitting in the passenger seat of a car she’s driving to an unknown location and he lets himself sink into it, into one thing that isn’t dead or broken or – well, lost among the stars. They all are now.

“Your work is incredible,” Banner is saying, slowly, “I hoped to meet you at that party Stark threw. Also does anyone mind if I just treat this as a dream? I just saw someone who looked like a centipede if they were bipedal.”

“I can’t even remember why I didn’t go to that.”

“Please don’t treat this as a dream.” Thor has heard enough Midgardians talking about the absurd things that happen in their dreams, the absurd ways they behave, to be wary. Besides, if he has to ache for the sheer reality of it all, then at least others should treat it seriously. “Jane, you had a funding meeting.” He could start asking questions, try to plan, but her movements in the traffic aren’t aimless. After what feels like an eternity of having to fight other people’s momentum tooth and claw, it’s good to settle into the momentum of someone he can trust.

“Don’t you think it’s odd, Thor, that when we’re on a literal alien planet and in trouble what should happen but your girlfriend should show up to save our asses? Don’t you think that’s just a little bit unlikely? That she should be here at all?”

“No, actually, this is exactly the sort of thing Jane does,” he says, and she grins.

“This place is some sort of intergalactic crossroads. I’ve had a few experimental bridges come out here so I started putting probes out and then eventually I made one big enough to have a look myself.”

“And the portal collapsed.”

“Not the first time! The second time. And I swear it was sabotage. I’m trying to make something that can either open mine from the other side or build a new bridge but I need six different specialist parts and some alternative to duct tape –”

“They don’t have duct tape here?” Banner asks, his voice almost as shocked as Jane’s had been, and Thor studiously stares out of the window as six strong emotions finally get within melee range of each other within him. Even the relief hurts. Even the love.

“Nope. It’s gonna take me at least – well, if this was Earth I’d say three weeks to have something with a hope of functioning but my phone clock’s gone completely haywire and I’m trying not to get distracted by figuring out why this place’s spacetime warping can affect phones.”

“But you’re taking the data?”

“Obviously! I’ll have a look when we get home.”

Three weeks is too long. Even with whatever strange spacetime warp that had dropped Loki here weeks before Thor, three weeks is too long. It had taken him three minutes to break Loki’s hold on Asgard, and with no king there – and where was Heimdall, anyway? – his sister could simply walk in. Oh, the Einherjar would fight. They would be missing Sif, who has been working with Thor in his search for Ragnarok – hopefully she is still out seeking the truth of the ship of nails, rather than home, in the crossfire – but Hogun has been promoted to a higher command role. But even then. Thor has known for some years that he is capable of killing his friends. An elder sister, raised on the greatest wars their father has ever fought, with no love for Asgard – she would not only be capable, but willing as well.

The hovercar judders to a halt, and Thor realises he’s missed a huge chunk of the conversation. “This is where I’ve been staying,” Jane says. “It should be safe.”

It’s a strange shelter of malformed junk that doesn’t look stable until he notices the small wedges placed in strategic locations. The big pieces are too big for Jane to have realistically moved herself; this is probably a chance arrangement that she simply noticed and turned into a viable structure. At least, if everything else in his life is dust and bones, the blessing of her sheer genius and resourcefulness remains.

She squeezes his arm. Banner has gone into the shelter and there’s a moment, just a moment, of privacy. “What happened?” she asks, and he baulks at the idea of trying to explain it all, here and now.

“The worst,” is all he can muster. Gently, he brushes a hand along her jaw and she tilts it upwards. He leans in, hesitating, and touches his forehead against hers instead of kissing her. Her skin is rough from living here, but under the ubiquitous rubbish-stink of this place she smells the same. She hugs him awkwardly, standing on tiptoe. One hand rubs the too-short back of his head. “Don’t – don’t do that.”

“Sorry.”

A voice rings out, unwelcome, from the shelter. “Hey, guys? There’s some trash beeping at me like it wants something in there.”

“That’s just the wormhole scanner, it doesn’t work right because of interference from the junkyard.” Her attention immediately returns to Thor, but the moment is broken and they step away from each other.

“I promise I will explain, I just need – some time. And – ” his stomach is growling, he distantly realises, and given that she doesn’t look underfed this will hopefully make her laugh rather than stressed. If someone laughs, that will be a win. “Sustenance.”

Sure enough, she does laugh. Oh, he loves her.

It’s the first stroke of luck in a cacophony of disaster. Between them, a three-week timescale can be reduced. Between them, they can cope with Banner’s shock. Between them, there will be a way off this rock. And what then, he doesn’t know, his mind is still tethered to that Norwegian cliffside and struggling to break away into any sort of plans, but they can work it out. He sits down and eats something that is worse and less identifiable than a Pop-Tart with an approximation of the calm that can quell grief’s first howling.


End file.
